Singapore Whets Its Appetite for Innovation

Bottled water sit next to the cashier’s counter in a Watsons’ store in Singapore, which relies on neighboring Malaysia for much of its fresh water.

Bloomberg News

Surrounded by water but desperately short of enough to drink, Singapore is tapping its tech-savvy youth for new innovations that can boost supplies and also help the country earn revenue.

For decades the small city-state has been ahead of the curve on water-purification technologies – in part to reduce dependence on neighboring Malaysia, which supplies it with around half of its fresh water.

But years of innovation have not done enough to completely eliminate Singapore’s need to look elsewhere for supplies, and it hopes to foster a local start-up community which could provide it with a valuable export.

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Water sustainability has always been a “strategic vulnerability” for Singapore, said Chew Men Leong, chief executive of the government’s Public Water Board. Young entrepreneurs can help the industry develop solutions to freshwater shortages – and in the process generate economic returns, he added.

Some of those solutions will be on display next month when participants of Singapore’s HydroPreneur Programme will present their ideas at Singapore International Water Week.

More than 50 engineers and entrepreneurs from Singapore and elsewhere have participated in the nine-week HydroPreneur program, which provides young entrepreneurs in the field of water treatment with mentors to prepare them for entering the industry. The water week event will give the participants the chance to pitch their ideas to global water companies and potential investors.

Melvin Tang is among those hoping to impress the industry’s top executives.

A PhD student in wastewater engineering at the National University of Singapore, Mr. Tang is currently developing a cheap, easily-assembled filtration system that runs without electricity. He hopes it will prove helpful in areas hit by natural disasters, where electricity may not be available.

Another participant is 27-year-old Jonathan Cohen from Israel who has filed a provisional patent on a new technique that he hopes will replace manual testing of water samples with an automated system that uses magnetic induction to test for pathogens and toxins.

He and his team hope the system could provide immediate analysis of potentially harmful water, benefiting industries from homeland security to personal food safety.

Singapore has invested heavily in technologies to improve water purification and collection in the decades since its 1965 independence. No major rivers run through the country, and it is too small to collect enough groundwater to supply a growing population of 5.4 million people.

The country has put more than 470 million Singapore dollars (US$376 million) over 10 years into research and development and has pioneered techniques like wastewater purification that are now utilized around the world.

Its investments have begun to pay off. Research and development engineer James Selvaraj Anthony Prince, another HydroPreneur participant, has already filed five water purification patents.

Mr. Chew says Singapore is confident it can achieve its goal of becoming self-sufficient in clean water generation. And with programs like HydroPreneur, he also believes the country can grow its cluster of research companies to compete with the best in the world.

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Indonesia Real Time provides analysis and insight into the region, which includes Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Brunei. Contact the editors at SEAsia@wsj.com.

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